An Unbroken Silence
by Jade Eclipse
Summary: Sometimes they sat in their own world of silence, where they drank too much and said too little. But healing comes in anger, not in bottles.


An Unbroken Silence

Summary: Sometimes they sat in their own world of silence, where they drank too much and said too little. But healing comes in anger, not in bottles.

The events hinted at in this story are from a never-to-be-completed story that I wrote way back in first season, but I made it as vague as I could, so I don't think it matters.

Characters: Sawyer, Kate. Decidedly not shippy, but some might have slipped in and I don't really mind how you interpret it. I try my hardest not to put pairings in a story, but Sawyer already had a drinking vignette with Jack, so I needed someone else. She stole the spot. They're also out of character. But that's something of the point.

This is my longest one-shot to date (which, of course, began as a random idea and… ran away from me laughing it's wordy little head off), and there are a few issues with it: Why is Kate not in jail? I haven't the slightest notion. Why are they off the Island? Again, lack of notion. I also slipped into capitalizing 'Island'. I hope you don't mind; it's a habit.

Rating: I give it a big ole T. Because I'm clueless when it comes to the rating system and pick the rating on a general whim. Besides, there is Sawyer. Hence language. Also rated for extreme overuse of italics and parentheses.

It is impossible, with any story in any genre, to get reviews. Especially for something that I don't own (subtle disclaimer).

Reviews, O Reviews. Wherefore art thou Reviews? Deny thy father and refuse thy name!

Enjoy.

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The drink burned all the way down his throat and into the pit of his stomach, the caustic taste lingering long after he set the glass back down on the pockmarked wooden table. He looked across the table at her, sitting all proper with that morose look on her face, eyes hidden behind her lowered lashes and hands wrapped around her own glass, the condensed droplets of water on the outside slipping along her fingers. He always found himself shooting glances at her, but she would never return his gaze, never chance letting their eyes meet. That was the rule, after all. They could never look directly at one another, for risk of suddenly finding that they had to start speaking and never stop until the truth was released, angry and crimson. And it wasn't the Island anymore, where truth would fight to get out no matter how hard they tried to drag it in. Here, it was safely imprisoned- the real world had no place for it.

He forced himself to direct his attention elsewhere, to the cheap pictures framed on the wall or the burned, scratched surface of the table. His fingers itched to light a cigarette, to chase ash and smoke after the liquor, but he knew she didn't like it and resisted (she never actually admonished him about it, just scooted away from him until he understood). His eyes were pulled back to her, and then they danced away again. He didn't like to look at her, anyway. She looked so old, so world-weary. As sad as she had been before, now that they were 'home' she was worse.

He was amazed they had remained in contact, but they both needed someone familiar and there was no one else. He wasn't even sure what they were to each other any more- his relationships were often to either extreme, never dwelling in the bewildering middle. One was either his lover or enemy, but she was something else. Not an enemy, not a lover, not even a friend or distant acquaintance. He couldn't define her and so he surrendered the attempt. Their relationship was hollow at best now, like two swimmers clinging to each other while they both sink. They hardly spoke, never laughed, and became empty. They weren't even shadows of themselves, except for those rare, ever increasingly rare times when there was just a flicker of emotion in her (and, in fact, in him). Because sometimes, she would suddenly smile, if that could be called a smile when it was really an unintentional twitch of her lips upward that lasted a tremulous second before the weight of worlds brought it crashing back down. Sometimes, she would randomly knock on his door in the middle of the night and sequester his living room, bringing a movie and making him sit down to watch it with her. It was always a musical, too, and sometimes she would hum a few bars before memories caught up to her and her voice crackled away like dust. Still, there was no talking. It got to the point that sometimes he would call her, dial her number like a robot and wait for the rings to break off. He would have to greet her first, and then she would return the courtesy… then, often, he would sit there for hours, sprawled out on the couch among beer bottles and unpaid bills, listening to her breathe. Somebody did, eventually, cut off his electricity, so now they continued this routine in person; they sat in their own world of silence, where they drank too much and said too little.

It was a little harder in person. The desire to make some excuse, offer some deterrent to guilt (he'd heard it called 'survivor's guilt', and what a funny little name) was almost overwhelming. Every time he felt the need to say something, he forced the words back down with alcohol, but his glass was nearly empty and so there was nothing to stop him. The word tore its way past his lips like some involuntary paroxysm.

"Kate," he said. Only he could make that domesticity sound cold and impartial, but he can't ever call her 'Freckles' any more. He lost the right to that. Alarm crossed her features, and then their gazes met.

Her chapped lips parted just enough for her to let out the soft 'S' sound before she stopped, cutting the word off before it had even begun. Instead she asked, "What?" She sounded annoyed that he had interrupted such _fascinating _quiet. Her toneless voice grated on his nerves, and her lack of reaction only spurred him to anger, already encouraged by liquor. If nothing else, belligerence would give him the nerve to keep going instead of subsisting and allowing conversation to die off.

"This," he said, nodding at her. To think, talking had once come so easily. "Is it always gonna be like this? Are _you _always gonna be like this?"

"This is how I am."

Liar. "No it's not. Come on, Kate."

"Come on _what_?" she demanded. Irritation flashed across her face, and he felt a faint glow of satisfaction at getting some display of emotion from her. It was just the first step in cracking that infernal shell around her (he denied his own defensive walls, of course).

"You've been mopin' for the past three months," he pointed out.

"So? You were on the Island with us, James. You saw what happened."

"Yeah, I _did_. But that don't mean I gotta start acting like _my_ life's over. And when the hell did you start callin' me _James_?" But, turnabout being fair play, he couldn't really say anything since he had started calling her by her real name.

"We lost something. I have a right to be sad about it. You have to care at least a _little_." How like her that was. On the Island, she had been the only one who would really see him, who would come to him in spite of letters and cons and a thousand lies piled to the sky. She had been the only one who treated him as an equal. Here, she demeaned him; made him _less_ human in her eyes and more the shallow monster seen on the Island.

"Fuck it," he said. "And fuck you, Katie. You're tryin' so hard to follow them all to the grave. Well, _fuck it_. You wanna keep one leg six feet under, fine, but stop dragging me down there with you. I don't have a death wish."

She rolled her eyes, tossing her head back with the movement, a derisive little sound escaping her lips. But the angrier she got, he could see her coming back up for air after so long keeping herself imprisoned underground. She didn't fit in a coffin, not while she still breathed and lived. This was the woman who had so captivated him after the devastation of a plane crash, and the fury was bringing her back from this empty skeleton she had become. "Sure seems like it."

"You really wanna follow them all the way to kingdom come? Then get it over with. The living dead act doesn't suit you. One or the other, take your pick."

"And what would you suggest, James, since you know me so _well_?"

God _damn it_, that was an annoying name. It was like a shock to his mind every time he heard it. "I suggest you stick around. Neither of us is exactly upward bound."

She slammed her hand down on the table, and he actually started at the unexpected sound. She was glaring directly at him, meeting his eyes and holding them for longer than she had in months as she tried to stare him down. "I actually thought you would have cared. Of _course_ not: you're _Sawyer_, you don't care about anyone or anything except yourself. We saw them mowed down in front of us, one by one. We had to go back and _bury_ them, Sawyer! How can something like that not get to you?"

It did, in fact, get to him, and it stung that she thought it didn't. He remembered all the bodies, and the sand and tide stained red, ruining the paradisiacal illusion of the Island. He remembered the faces of people he had known and those he didn't, the few torn stragglers making their way dazedly about the sight of a massacre. There had been people injured who couldn't be saved, who had died right before horrified eyes. The aftermath had been just as brutal as the actual destruction. He had seen the appalling suffering and shock in her face, and she must have- she _must have-_ seen it mirrored in his own expression. Neither of them had cried, completely drained of the energy to do so by the chaos around them that had consumed everything safe and real left. He still wasn't sure how he had survived, how he and Kate and a scarce few others had managed to scrape by with their lives, and he piled that bit of self-blame on top of his already abundant supply. The whole thing was a fog in his mind, one terrible and bloody nightmare too awful to be reality. There was a reason he allowed the silence to remain uninterrupted for so long. But the one thing that would always plague him was perhaps the truth she needed to here. "We _lived_, Kate. Yeah, it was all fucked up to end all, but we lived. It was over and we weren't lyin' there with the rest of them. We survived, Freckles, you and me. You and me ain't dead yet."

Somewhere in the middle of that, all the anger had bled (bad word, bad, bad word) out of her eyes and all the wretched pain had returned. He was afraid she would just sink back into her gentle misery, basking in the indulgence of depression instead of facing up to all her aches and sores. Their conversation, he feared, had only been a glimpse of the woman that Katherine Austen would never be again, and now she would go back to that terrible ghost who could only breathe and sigh and drink herself dizzy. But then her lower lip wobbled a bit (oh, no, she was going to cry, he couldn't stand her tears), a crease forming on her forehead. Her shoulders quivered a bit, her breath hitched. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, some sort of dam broke inside and she burst out into great, loud peals of laughter.

He blinked at her, trying to comprehend this new development. One shaking hand was raised to her mouth, her face absolutely red and a vein showing at her temple, as if it took an inconceivable amount of energy just to keep up her hysteria. "Kate?" he asked cautiously. "Freck- Freckles?"

"Sawyer," she gasped out, "I'm- I'm sorry." More giggles wracked her. "I just-" She gave up trying to speak and threw her head back, laughing into the ceiling, her neck moving with every breath. He raised his eyebrows and sank down in his seat.

"Think I liked Silent Freckles better. Bring her back," he requested. This just encouraged her, and as he watched her a slow smile crept across his face. He wasn't quite prone to such dramatic fits, not quite prepared to let everything come screaming out in the middle of a bar, but maybe this would do him good. Maybe he could heal by association.

So they sat there until everything in her was spent and the silence was irreversibly destroyed. There were only two of them now, still lost even when they spent their days frequenting bars instead of caves or fearsome jungles. But it seemed they had a chance to let go, to get past the Island that had devoured them whole.

Hell, maybe one day they'd even learn how to live with it, maybe one day they'd find some measure of acceptance beyond laughter and alcohol. Maybe next time the movie Freckles brought would be a tragedy, and they would find room to make jokes- or, if it were still a musical, she would sing it at the top of her lungs until Sawyer lost patience and told her to stop giving him a headache. Maybe they could fit back into the real world, in spite of everything they were and all they had to cope with. It seemed like such an impossible but appealing dream, for they were the only survivors of a tremendous tragedy: the only survivors of the doomed Oceanic Flight 815.


End file.
